On a morning in September 2024, Noman told his wife Maryam that he was leaving for Spain shortly. He said he wanted to earn a lot of money for his family and he believed that he would be able to do so in Spain. Maryam was surprised to hear of this for the first time and she felt anxious. She said that she even tried to dissuade Noman, but he had already made up his mind and was adamant. He told her that his agent had made very secure travel arrangements and everything was to his satisfaction. Maryam had little choice but to reconcile with it.
Noman secured a valid visa for Senegal through his agent. His itinerary was to travel to Addis Ababa using 'Fly Dubai', then catch a connecting flight to Dakar, Senegal, with 'Ethiopian Air'. There, he was to meet a local agent who would take him along to Mauritania. His agent assured him that everything was well planned and all he had to do was to follow the plan as instructed.
Noman’s air tickets and boarding pass
Noman left Pakistan on 11th September 2024. He landed in Addis Ababa and took the next flight to Dakar, Senegal where he was received by an agent and he, along with several other men, were taken to Mauritania by road as a group. When they crossed over into Mauritania, the group was handed over to another set of agents. The Mauritanian agents spoke French only and did not communicate much with the group. They transported Noman and his fellow group members to the port city of Nouakchott where they were shown into a safehouse and told to wait there for their next instructions.
At the airport departing for Dubai
Noman and his group inside the safehouse
Noman called home a few times from Nouakchott but did not talk about anything specific and neither did he sound particularly anxious. His safehouse in Nouakchott was not very comfortable and they were not allowed to go out at any time, but the men there stuck together, developed a sense of camaraderie and were generally in good spirits.
The incident had no footprints, no report of any boat capsize, no rescue report and therefore there was no possibility of getting any information. It was as if the men had been swallowed by the sea.
On 15th October, early in the morning, Maryam received Noman’s phone call and he told her that he and his group had reached the coast and would shortly be boarding the vessel to set sail for the Spanish Canary Islands. Noman told her that the journey would take three days and during that time as no communication would be possible, she had to be patient and remain calm. Maryam barely mumbled some farewell and the phone went silent.
The later events would reveal a critical piece of information that Noman had concealed from her. A few days prior to their intended sail towards the Canary Islands, the agents had transported Noman and his group to Nouadhibou, which is the second largest port city of Mauritania in Western Sahara and at a distance of some six hours from Nouakchott. Noman’s family did not have the knowledge that he would be sailing from the port of Nouadhibou.
Back home, bathed in anxiety, Maryam tried to put up a brave face but a cold fear had gripped her heart. Maryam had no understanding of the grim reality that these crossings on the Atlantic Ocean were made on small, beat up boats nor did she comprehend the magnitude of the extreme risk he was undertaking. When asked as to why she did not ask her husband for any details regarding his journey, she had no answer.
Telling her story, Maryam recalled that it was a very difficult three days for the whole family, as they waited for the reassuring phone call to let them know that Noman and his group had safely reached the Canary Islands. But even after the fourth day there was no confirmation phone call and no information about their vessel having reached any destination.
By the fourth day, as a chilling dread took hold, Noman's family desperately started to call on his phone but there was no connection. They contacted Noman's agent, who had extracted 1.5 million rupees from him for this journey and demanded to know about the vessel and of the safety of the men on board.
At first the agent told them that the vessel had reached Spain and that all the men had been taken to a camp and were safe. The agent assured them that Noman and others would contact their families soon; but that turned out to be a flat lie. The agent later confessed that he could not find any of them and there was no trace of their vessel. Noman and his group of more than thirty Pakistani men had disappeared in the sea.
What made any initial inquiry nearly impossible was the fact that Noman’s family did not have the crucial information about his last location in Mauritania from which he had sailed. In the months that followed, Noman’s family was trapped in a desperate quest, navigating a maze of uncertainty to find some news of Noman and his group but their efforts proved to be fruitless.
The families of the other men travelling with Noman were also frantically trying to get some information and could only cling to a desperate hope that the group might have been abducted by some rival human smuggling gang and they would still be alive in captivity somewhere as some of the agents suggested.
After almost a month of his disappearance, Noman’s uncle who resided in Paris and spoke French fluently, travelled to Morocco and Mauritania to search for his missing nephew and to find some clue of what might have happened to his vessel. According to him, he went to Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, made inquiries at the police stations and ports but there was no information of the missing vessel, no report of any boat capsize nor any kind of rescue reported around the time that Noman’s vessel sailed from Nouadhibou.
Noman’s family also reported the incident to the Federal Investigation Agency in Islamabad. According to the FIA officials they did receive the report and sent an inquiry to the Pakistani Embassy in Mauritania but there was no positive response received from there as well. The incident had no footprints, no report of any boat capsize, no rescue report and therefore there was no possibility of getting any information. It was as if the men had been swallowed by the sea.
For Noman’s young wife with an infant son in her lap, it is as if time has come to a standstill and she is trapped in a limbo. She has already left her husband's home and returned to her parents’ house because her in-laws appear to harbor a veiled resentment, indirectly blaming her for the fateful journey Noman chose to pursue; a decision that ultimately led to his disappearance. Maryam, however, insists that it was solely her husband’s decision and she had not pushed him to go to Europe at all. Maryam says all she wants is some answers: should she accept the finality that Noman is no more and mourn his death, or should she keep clinging to the fragile hope that he is alive and would return to her someday?
Noman’s son born after he went missing on the Atlantic Ocean
The stories of missing irregular migrants are tragedies without any closure and are indeed open wounds that refuse to heal; the manifestation of the greed of the human smugglers and the desperate determination of irregular migrants who want to reach Europe at all costs.